It's Always Been You
by Buster's Jezebel
Summary: Carl and Michonne have a bond. A bond that has only strengthened and grown over time. My writing is explicit so consider yourself warned, and please take note of my A/N as well if you click to read this story. I have no ownership of TWD television or graphic novels.


_A/N - I would consider this AU-ish. Some major cast members are not mentioned and one is mentioned as having been killed. I'm expanding on Carl and Michonne's bond that is every evident on the TV show. I'm postulating that Carl was ten when the infection hit and he's around sixteen now. I'm postulating that Michonne is around thirty. I have checked age-of-consent website for those of you that are thinking 'oh hell no'._

_Where I've set this story, somewhere on a river in Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi (where I did check and there are gators) the age of legal consent is sixteen. So, if you proceed, I truly hope you enjoy Carl and Michonne. Thanks to Elle Gardner for the conversation this week that generated this brainstorm._

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Carl woke in the already humid heat of the day with the drifting of the boat on the river. He groaned as he got out of his bunk bed and stretched. His body rippled and gleamed with sweat.

Michonne very nearly gasped as she stood in the doorway and watched him. She'd been on her way to wake him but had stopped when she'd seen him stirring.

Stopping in the doorway to make sure he actually woke up and didn't fall back asleep. They were hitting land today and she wanted to get an early start.

God, he was beautiful, all long and lean and tanned and scarred and damaged. But still beautiful. Beauty wasn't traditional to her, beauty wasn't pretty. Beauty was pain and suffering wrapped up in a stoic façade that would crack just enough for someone to know, to truly know there was a human being underneath.

And Carl, to Michonne right here and now was beautiful.

"Morning." Michonne finally spoke, just as Carl drifted a palm over his cock, cupped himself and nearly pushed it inside the baggy and worn shorts he was wearing to sleep in. She silently curses her voice's rustiness, no if she was being honest, her voice wasn't rusty. It was husky. Husky and weak from arousal she could feel pooling deep inside her body.

"Morning." Carl answered her as he turned away, showing her his back and the scars littered over it now. And that cooled her ardour faster than anything. She hadn't been fast enough to save him two years ago, she would carry that guilt for the rest of her life.

It didn't matter that he didn't blame her, held her in no ill will. She blamed herself and held herself in enough ill will for both of them. And Rick. Shaking her head clear of her black thoughts, Michonne spoke again. "Get a move on slow poke, we're burning daylight."

She grinned as Carl tossed a snorting laugh over his shoulder at her. Then she turned and left him to get dressed and grab what he was taking with him. "Meet you on deck." She said before she was out of earshot.

A little while later Michonne is handing gear down to the dinghy where Glenn is taking it to pack. Beth sat in it already. The four of them were heading out on a supply run for at least a week, possibly longer, depending on what the group they were meeting up with found.

These past few years since they'd tangled with the cannibals had been rough and not so rough. Both emotionally and physically. Michonne sighed quietly to herself.

"You okay Mich?" Glenn asked her. He'd seen her sigh, of course he had. Man missed nothing.

"Yeah, just…" She's cut off by Carl's appearance. Or rather, she cuts herself off.

"Let's blow this popstand." He says as a greeting making them all smile.

He's still chewing his jerky as he throws his own gear down to Glenn and gestures for Michonne to head on down.

She climbs down the ladder and looks up in time to get an eyeful of Carl's trim backside wiggling down the ladder to the dinghy.

Closing her eyes and biting her lip she turns away and sits down with an unusually graceless thump. Looking out across the water she sees a gator gliding into the shallows on the other side of the river.

"Where the hell are we now anyway?" She asks out of the blue as Carl sits down and turns the engine over as Glenn casts them off. Beth waves at Maggie and they fall back from the paddle steamer slowly.

"Hell if I know." Beth answered her.

Letting herself fall into a half doze as the drone of the small engine lulled her Michonne found her mind wandering. She remembered herself as she was before the infection had hit. Her own son, her lover. Her life.

None of it mattered now anyway. She remembered the friendships she'd forged that had fallen to death.

After a time, a bony yet somehow elegant hand touched her thigh making her jerk.

"What's up?" Carl's voice is quiet as he asks the question. Glenn and Beth giving them privacy by ignoring them.

"Nothing, just…melancholy is all." Michonne decides on after a few minutes.

Carl's hand squeezes her thigh in comfort before he drops it away. Michonne has to rein herself in from grabbing for it and holding it to her. Crazy, she was crazy. Her thoughts of what she'd lost were overridden by what she'd gained.

Carl, she'd gained Carl. He made up for everything. Everyone.

Turning to look at the opposite shore again, Michonne's mind wanders once more, this time down a memory lane titled Carl.

When she'd first met him, when he'd told her he trusted her more than anyone, even his father. When he'd grieved with her over the loss of his father, her friend. When she'd nursed him back after he'd been captured and tortured two years ago. When he'd told her he loved her.

Michonne's eyes water. How she wished that he'd told her he loved her as a sister, a friend, a mother even. But Carl hadn't said that, though to be fair he hadn't said he loved her like a lover either. But she knew that was what he'd meant.

A lover, a crush? No, she was doing him a disservice by trying to make light of his feelings, trying to make it as if what was what he thought. She knew he loved her like a lover. She knew it.

And she was terribly afraid she loved him too.

Shaking her head she returns herself to the present. Looking up, she meets Carl's gaze and smirks a little. "Just thinking."

"Yeah?" He asked her with grin. "'Bout what exactly?" His lips pursed before his eyebrow crooked in an unspoken invitation for her to share.

"Oh nothing." She answered. It was a game they'd always played. He'd ask, she answer but not tell. And he'd never push her, never.

"Cool, I've teen thinkin' too. 'Bout chocolate. I miss it, I hope we find some this time."

"M and M's." Michonne said on a sigh.

"Peanut butter cups." Beth said, joining their conversation.

"Caramel fudge." Glenn joined in.

"Oh hell, fudge. Fudge yeah." Michonne said making them all laugh lightly.

When the reach land they dock the dinghy and hide it carefully. They're meeting with another group that have been out for a couple of weeks scavenging.

A few hours later they meet at the designated place and check their haul. Carl stays with Michonne as always. They were a unit, would always be a unit. But she'd never thought of them being a unit in any other way than they already were.

Until she had.

And now she had, she couldn't stop thinking of it. Carl's age didn't matter, he was a man, had been a man for several years. But she knew it would matter one day, knew it would matter to other's on the steamer.

Looking over at Carl counting and separating some bullets they'd found she sighed again.

"You can tell me anytime Mich." He said to her without even looking up.

"I love you." She said. Her heart lifted. She'd said it. Finally she'd admitted what she'd been feeling for Carl for longer than she could ever truly admit to herself.

Carl stopped sorting and looked over at her. His gaze heated as he saw the truth of what she'd said in her eyes. Heated more as he realised that she'd been overheard by Abraham.

"I love you too." He answered her. He stepped toward Michonne and lifted his hand, palm cupping her cheek. "It's always been you, it will always be you Mich." Michonne's eyes fluttered closed as she leaned into Carl's touch.

It felt so good to lean again. So good.

Warm breath caresses her forehead before chapped and rough lips kiss her. "Later tonight, okay?" Nodding she opens her eyes, meeting Carl's hazel gaze, her own brown eyes brimming.

Carl goes back to his counting, having kept the tally in his head even when he'd spoken to Michonne. No bullets for his dad's gun unfortunately. He didn't think he'd ever find any again.

Time would come when he'd have to leave it behind he guessed. Just like it would come to give Judith his mother's rings that he wore with his dad's on a strip of leather around his neck. But that time wasn't yet.

He was thankful Carol and Tyrese had been happy to take Judith in, he'd been in no shape to parent her when his dad had died. He wouldn't make a good parent at all, he was honest enough inside himself to know that already.

And that was something he'd need to figure out with Michonne. Shaking his head Carl finished the tally and put them in the right piles for people to gather according to what weapons they had.

His preference was for the baseball bat with nails and barbed wire that he had sitting beside him. He never left the steamer without it and a half-dozen knives secreted on his person these days. It had been a valuable lesson to learn that a gun wouldn't always save him from a Walker.

Only he could save himself from a Walker. Quick as a snake his hand reaches out and grabs the one that made a move for his bat.

"Mine." He said quietly to the newcomer that had only been on the boat for a couple of months.

"Cool, sorry dude, wanted to check what it was like to swing, we got a couple in that haul over there." The boy gestured over to another load. Carl never took his eyes off him.

"Mine." He said again, not caring that the boy was going to think him simple-minded. He knew he wasn't stupid. To be honest if they thought him simple-minded they wouldn't try to befriend him or talk to him which he preferred anyway.

He had all the company and friends he wanted or needed. Everyone else was just to help them survive. It was how they worked.

"Okay dude, sorry. Like I freaking said." The boy moved away and Carl stared after him for several seconds before he went back to his work.

He and Michonne work steadily all day, sorting and packing what's being transported back to the paddle steamer with some of the other group while they stay and keep foraging. There is almost always someone out on a run these days.

They eat dinner that evening and then separate to sleep. Carl finds Glenn and Beth settled down and they tell him where to find Michonne. He wondered idly if they realised that tonight there would be more than sleeping involved.

It didn't matter, would never matter. Carl never wondered what life would be like if the infection hadn't happened like most people did. Most older people he amended his thought. If he lived five more years, he'd have lived with the infection longer than he'd lived without having teen ten when it had hit.

He did wonder sometimes though whether he'd have felt the way he felt about Michonne if it hadn't hit. He thought maybe he wouldn't have. And it pains him to admit, even to himself that he is glad the infection had happened.

Because it had brought him Michonne, it had brought him a love the likes of which he knew, he knew he would never have found without it.

His heart ached for what he'd lost to gain it. His parents. Shane. Sophia.

Opening the door to the storage room, Carl slipped inside quietly closing it behind him. He saw the chair and wedged it under the doorknob for a modicum of privacy.

"Got watch tonight?" Michonne questioned him as he turned toward her.

"No, tomorrow night, both of us then, I made sure we were scheduled together like always." He answered her.

Smiling at him Michonne shook her head. "Always planning, just like your dad."

Carl stepped to Michonne, his backpack dropping quietly to the floor. He left his bat by the door, resting on the chair keeping them barricaded inside the storeroom with its one high window.

The small battery powered lantern cast Michonne in a deeper pool of shadows, her eyes and teeth glimmering at Carl as she reached for him.

Carl enfolded her into his arms, he was taller than her now, bigger in every way. He tucked his chin on the top of her curly hair, her dreads had finally grown out and she mostly kept her hair shorn now, but had let a little length come into it the past year or so.

It was wild and untamed, just like she was Carl always thought. Sliding his hands down her back, he let them drift to a place he'd never dared touch her, though he'd thought about doing so often.

Palms drift over her hips and cup her ass, he curses his trembling, but she pulls back and looks up.

"It's okay Carl, we go at your pace, yours."

"Mich, we can't, I don't." Carl broke off and shook his head even as his hold on Michonne's backside tightened. "I wouldn't be a good dad, we can't, I want to, but we can't." He finishes his disjointed words knowing that Michonne would understand him. She always understood him.

"Shh, it's okay. We can do whatever you want, we don't have any limits. And while I think you're wrong about being a dad, it's not something I could give you anyway." Carl looked down at Michonne.

"I'm sorry." He said to her, knowing immediately that something had happened somewhere along the line.

"Me too." Her hand comes to lay along his cheek this time, soft somehow despite the calluses he could still feel. And though Carl knew immediately she was saying sorry for a completely different reason than he was, he let it be.

Because he knew, he did, that he wouldn't be a good dad.

Then he let it go. Let it drift away on a cloud with the what never had been and what never would be, a cloud of sorrow and despair and heartbreak, of loss and grief. A cloud that tipped over into a rainbow of joy and happiness, because…because despite all that, he had something, something worth keeping and protecting and fighting for.

He had Michonne.

In every way that he wanted and needed, he had Michonne. And she had him.

Groaning, Carl lowers his head to hers, his lips hover over Michonne's full ones for the longest instant, he's never kissed anyone before. Never wanted to, never even thought to.

"It's always been you." He says again. Repeating the words he'd said to her this afternoon when she'd finally professed her love. Words that Abraham had overheard.

"In this world, it's always been you too." Michonne answered him with a sad smile. And Carl got that, because he might not think of what had been, or what could have been, but he knew Michonne did, had to almost because of what she had lost.

"Good enough." He smiled back as his lips turned up in a quirking grin. He didn't kiss her though. Michonne was, or would be his first in every way, she would show him what she wanted and how she wanted it.

From their kiss on. Carl may have dreamt and fantasized, but Michonne had acted. He closes his eyes as Michonne's lips reach for his.

Soft, they're so soft, a little chapped and still somehow soft. His own, he could almost feel through Michonne were rough and more chapped. Scarred on the inside from when he'd been tortured and punched, his teeth had split his lips on the inside.

Michonne made him forget this when her lips swept inside his mouth, over his scars, she made them fade away to nothing as Carl's own tongue met hers tentatively, stroking hers back, following hers when she coaxed him inside her own mouth.

Pulling away after a bit, Carl watched a string of saliva keep them connected. Taking a breath, he lets the string draw him back to the warm cavern of Michonne's mouth. They kiss for what feels like hours.

Eventually Carl's hands tighten on Michonne's backside in an instinctual move, pulling her to him, up against his hardness. He moans as does Michonne.

"You sure you want everything tonight? We don't have to, you're so young." Michonne draws back again, far enough that their saliva string snaps. Carl feels it snap inside his heart, but's it's a good snap almost. Because while that string of saliva snaps, the rubber band that connects his heart to Michonne's, what had allowed her to track him down when he'd been taken without almost any sign whatsoever tightened.

Carl nodded, "Whatever you want, I'm ready for, I've always been ready for you Mich." He says. He sees Michonne shake her head and he grins, lightning fast before he gives in and leans down, laying his lips over the pulse he can see beating erratically under Michonne's skin.

Opening his mouth over it, Carl runs his tongue over the pounding underneath Michonne's skin making her gasp and moan again and push up against his hips, demanding more without words.

Licking her neck, he again moved on instinct, mouth moving down, toward her breasts. His fingers fumble over her buttons, but she helps him out and before he knows it, her breasts are spilling into his hands.

Warm and soft with nipples that bore into his palm impudently. Nipples that have suckled another child, something she'll never do again. Carl feels the grief she has no doubt felt herself that she'll never be a mother again.

Pushing it away he looks up, checking she is okay with that he's going to do. Michonne's smile blinds him. "Anything." She answers his unspoken question.

Kneeling down, Carl's hands palm her breasts again, thumbs rubbing her nipples softly, feeling them harden, he rubs harder and Michonne's head falls back on another moan of pleasure.

Then she is leaning over Carl, pushing a breast into his mouth, Carl suckled on her nipple without thought, his tongue laving it, flicking at it, making her move restlessly against him.

And then Michonne is leaning over him, surrounding him as her mouth takes his again, harder this time, faster. Needier.

She kneels in front of Carl and her fingers moves to his buttons, slipping his shirt off before she starts on his belt. Carl inhales sharply as her fingers graze over his stomach and pelvis in the process.

Tangling in his pubic hair and skating his cock. "Oh, Mich." He whispers as he feels himself jerk and harden further. He goes as Michonne pushes him to his back and lets her strip him, boots, pants.

When he is naked and feeling vulnerable, he watches as she strips herself, quick and efficient.

Straddling his knees she puts her palms either side of his head. Looking down she stares at Carl, looking her fill, nicks and grazes, still hardly any beard growth, nothing like his dad there.

Carl watches her look at him, hopes she finds him pleasing. As pleasing as he finds her. "You Carl, are beautiful." She says to him as she leans down and captures his mouth again.

Unable to dispute her statement, Carl falls under Michonne's spell as she kisses her way down his body, his neck as he'd done to her, his own nipples as he'd done to her, though she uses her fingers a lot more there.

His chest and abdomen, Carl groans now as Michonne lays a cooling wet path down, her destination obvious. Her movements are unhurried, almost studied as Carl finds himself writhing on their makeshift bed in heightening anticipation.

"Mich, don't tease me, not tonight." He finally begs her.

Stopping and looking back up at him, Michonne cocks her head to the side. Eventually she nodded. "Okay, do you want me to suck you off or do you want to be inside me?" She asked quietly, her hand slid down and stroked up and down his cock.

"Oh God, I…" Carl trailed off as his hips arched off the bed and he exploded in her hand, both mortified and excited beyond belief.

He opened his eyes as he felt himself finally stop squirting and looked up to see Michonne watching him. Smiling. She was smiling.

"Sexy." She said. Carl watched dumfounded as she let go of his cock and swiped a finger through the come littering his stomach. Then, still looking at him she brought it to her mouth and licked it off.

"Taste good, won't be a hardship to swallow you down next time." She laughed as Carl groaned again and began to harden.

"Never thought about the recovery time with you still being a teenager, yay me." She said drily and Carl felt himself flush in embarrassment. He stroked his own fingers through his come and looking at Michonne did what he usually did.

Licked himself clean. He watched Michonne's eyes flare. She looked like she wanted to eat him, literally. "That was sexy, do it again." Carl obeyed, licked his fingers clean again and Michonne swooped down, her mouth opening over his as her tongue sought his out, stroked over it looking for the taste of Carl's own come inside his mouth.

"Yes." Carl said as his hand moved to the back of her neck, held her to him while he felt his cock become fully erect again. He let Michonne go as she pulled back and moved over him.

Her thighs straddled his hips and she raised herself up, took his cock in her hand and then looking straight into Carl's eyes she took him in.

Hot. Tight. Wet. Encompassing.

He was inside Michonne. The only woman he'd ever wanted to be with, would ever want to be with.

Carl's eyes rolled in his head as his hips thrust up. He knew without a doubt he was going to come again almost immediately, too excited by the fact that he was inside a woman for the first time.

Not even that he was inside a woman, that he was inside Michonne, that she loved him as he loved her. Age difference and skin colour be damned. She was giving herself to him as she had given herself to no one since the outbreak.

Her heart was in his hands, Carl knew this as surely as he knew that she owned his. "Mich…" His voice trails off, he has no more words, doesn't need any more words he knows, because Michonne understands.

"I know, me too." She whispers back as she moves up and down on Carl's cock. He groans and his hands move to her hips as she rotates hers on him, impossibly sinking down further.

Eyes fluttering now, Carl's body moves on instinct, hips pushing up as Michonne's push down and he holds her tighter, thinks he might even be bruising her.

When she holds still and just clenches her internal muscles as tight as she can though Carl moans loudly and rears up, his arms moving around her waist, his mouth latching onto a nipple to pull and suck strongly on it.

Michonne's back arches, she pushes her nipple into Carl's mouth and her internal muscles flutter around his cock, one of her hands moving in between them to flick at her clit, push herself over the edge into orgasm.

Pulling off her breast, Carl watches her manipulate herself. "That's your clit?" He asked her as his head dropped to her shoulder to watch, even as his cock jerked and shuddered inside her.

"Mmm, yes." Michonne answered him, focussed now on her own orgasm.

"Can I?" Carl asks as Michonne suddenly feels foreign fingers on her clit, moving alongside her own. Tentative yes, but not hesitant.

Taking Carl's hand, she moves his fingers, manipulates them how she needs to be touched, brought to orgasm. When he gets her rhythm, Michonne lets him go and rests her arms on his shoulders, both looking down, watching him play with her, his pale fingers moving through her wiry pubic curls and inside her lips, to tease and flick at her bud.

"Yesss." Michonne drags the word out. "So good that it's not me, that it's you." She whispers as she turns her head to Carl's neck and opens her mouth on his jugular. Biting and sucking voraciously.

Carl has no idea she's marking him, making it known that he's taken. He just moans his pleasure and his fingers move faster on her as Michonne begins to move her hips on him, taking his cock again.

Dropping his head back, Carl looks at her, all flushed, blown pupils and heavy-lidded eyes. Michonne smiles at him. And he smiles back.

"Hey." She says softly.

"Hey." He answers back, just as softly.

Carl's eyes flutter closed as she feels him harden and throb inside her and then release. His fingers stutter on her clit before picking up rhythm and pushing over the edge into orgasm herself.

Carl feels his balls draw up as he and Michonne look at each other. He moans as he feels himself release inside Michonne, spurting several times before he finishes orgasming. His arms tighten on Michonne and as he lays back down, he pulls her with him.

Hands stroking over her backside as she straightens her legs, he keeps himself inside her for as long as possible, not wanting to leave her warmth.

Taking Michonne's weight, they lay there for some time. A shiver from Michonne has Carl moving finally, letting his softened cock slip free with a sigh of disappointment he turns and grabs up his own bedding and spreads it over them. Then he draws Michonne back into his arms.

"You okay?" She asks him after a little more time has passed. They're both lying together, stroking each other in comfort.

"I am. It was you. It's always been you." Carl said to her as he kissed the top of her head.

Michonne's arm winds around his waist and they slide into sleep together.

The next day Carl is working outside, packing up what is about to be taken back to the paddle steamer when he over hears some men talking.

"Fucked if I know, didn't know he was interested in anyone, male or female." One voice.

"Well, someone's interested in him, ain't no way he gave himself that fucking hickey." A second voice.

"I bet it was a dude, bet he's a homo, he never looks at any girls I seen." A third voice.

"He ain't gay, and being gay ain't wrong you fuckwit. You'd think the world going to shit would get rid of prejudice, depressing as shit to know it's alive and well." Carl snorts and laughs quietly at Abraham's irritated voice even as he wonders who the hell they're talking about.

"Well, who the fuck gave him that hickey then Abraham?" Voice two asks.

"Yeah." Voice one concurs with voice two.

"I did." Michonne answers, shocking the hell out of Carl. He frowned, a hickey? He had a hickey? He looked around for something reflective but found nothing and nearly missed the end of the conversation.

"You?" Voice three asked Michonne incredulously.

"Are you hard of hearing then?" Michonne questioned voice three. Carl laughed along with Abraham now.

"No, but he's a kid." Voice three again.

"He's more a man than any of you will ever be, and you know it. Age don't matter in this world anymore when being a man is measured in guts and grit." Abraham again.

"What he said." Michonne agreed. And then, "You want me to prove it? He's right around the corner listening you know, or you would have if you'd been paying attention to your surroundings." Michonne mocks them as she steps around the corner and into Carl's line of sight.

'Hey." She greets him.

"Hey, I have a hickey?" Carl greets and asks her at the same time.

"You do." She says equably.

"Marking me then Mich?" Carl asked suddenly as he realised the truth.

"I am." She answers just as evenly.

Grinning Carl shook his head and threw an arm around her neck, drawing her in. His lips kiss her forehead before she pulls back and leans up, taking his lips with hers, in a clear public message.

Carl is hers.

Carl lets her kiss him. When they draw back, he looks down at her. "Don't worry, it's you, it's always been you."


End file.
